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Reason Papers
Walden: Philosophy and Knowledge of Humankind
Kelly Dean Jolley, Auburn University
Ask yourself: How does a man Peam to get a 'nose' for something? And how can
this nose be used.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1. What I propose to do here is to follow a path of thinking; more specifically, to follow
a path ofthinking in Walden, a path ofthinking about philosophy, hence about the subjects
of philosophy.' This essay, like the path it follows, opens onto more than it brings to a
close. Thoreau might call this writing "undefined in front".
2. Consider this essay work in Conceptual Apprecation. I owe the term "Conceptual
Appreciation" to Paul Ziff. It is the subtitle of his book of essays, Philosophic Turnings.
Since it is relevant to my understanding of Conceptual Appreciation, and to the unwinding
of this essay, here is most of Ziff s brief Preface:
For the time being, the only way to stick to the point in philosophy is to wander:
any question is coiled around another; a winding path is followed...The attempt [of
these essays] is always the same: to appreciate our conceptual situation.*
When working in conceptual appreciation, a philosopher is not providing theories deductive or inductive (in the scientific way), but rather, if he is providing a theory at all, he is
providing an exhibitive theory - a theory that shows us our conceptual situation, so that
we can come to appreciate it. This is delicate work. The aim of Conceptual Appreciation
is to illuminate, and not to disrupt, our whole involvementwith our concepts - maybe even
to bring us back into whole involvement with them ifwe were at a loss b e f ~ r eThe
. ~ danger
of Conceptual Appreciation is that we will think that the work of Conceptual Appreciation
is responsible for our conceptual situation, instead of responsible to it. Thinking this
deforms the work of Conceptual Appreciation into system-building, into a theory deductive or inductive. When this happens, our conceptual situation as it is shown to us no longer
feels quite ours; we begin to feel as though it is ours only for so long as we consciously
comply with it. But of course our conceptual situation is not ours through conscious
Bringing
compliance: it is a shared form of life, and we are implicated in it ~nthinkingly.~
us to the point that we can (bear to) acknowledge this is a central task of Conceptual
Appreciation.
3. Besides being work in Conceptual Appreciation, this essay is also work on two of the
~ peculiar
great teachers of Conceptual Appreciation, Thoreau and ~ i t t g e n s t e i n .The
problems I face in this essay is that I am writing for two audiences at once, one like-minded
and willing to countenance the pairing of Thoreau and Wittgenstein and unsuspicious of
the work of Conceptual Appreciation, and the other unlike-minded, unwilling to countenance the pairing and suspicious of the work of Conceptual Appreciation. The fault of the
essay for the like-minded will be its lack of detail, the fault of the essay for the
unlike-minded will be its lack of justificatory, over-arching argument. Both faults are
mine; but they are endurable because I think the primary task of the paper - exhibiting
Walden as a work of philosophy - both demands them and makes some amends for them.
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The faults are demanded because (1) exhibiting Walden as a work of philosophy requires
that I find a vantage point from which to survey, to overlook, WaIden entire - and such a
survey will lose sight of detail; and, (2) exhibiting Walden as a work of philosophy requires
that I show Walden to be conceptually integral, that I show its central concepts to meld,
naturally, one with the other - and showing that leaves little room for justificatory,
over-arching argument. If I can show Waldento be conceptually integral, show its central
concepts to meld, then that will itself constituteall thejustificatory, over-arching argument
that should be necessary. The faults are amended, at least somewhat, because exhibiting
Walden as a work of philosophy adds a vital book to the shelf of philosophy books and
shows that there is yet another way of inflecting "philosophy", the inflection of Conceptual
Appreciation. (I also try to amend the faults in the notes, both by providing a bit more
detail and by sketching a fewjustificatory, overarchingarguments - or at least by pointing
the way to such arguments).
4. I take it that Walden is a book written, to use Thoreau's own words, "deliberately and
r e s e r ~ e d l ~What
. " ~ is it to write deliberately and reservedly? Thoreau's response to this
question - at least insofar as the question asks after the writing of such a book as WaZden
- is in the chapter entitled "Baker's Farm". In the course of describing his conversation
with John Field, Thoreau comments: "...I purposely talked to him as if he were a
philosopher, or desired to be one." This comment may not lighten the deliberate and
reserved writing of Walden on its own; but when paired with Thoreau's earlier remarks
on philosophy, it is of considerable help. In "Economy" Thoreau writes:
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is
admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is
not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom
as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity,
and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but
practically.
The student of Walden is talked to as if he were a person who loves wisdom enough to
live a certain way, or at least as if he were a person who desires to love wisdom enough
to live a certain way. Stress here should fall squarely on "to live". Thoreau is not talking
to people who want a parcel of information, exactly - who want a record of subtle thoughts
had by someone else; a system, say - he is talking to those in the grip of one or more of
the problems of life, someone facing a task or lacking a trade. To talk to such an audience
is to cast your talk a particular way, to undertake to instruct those to whom you are talking
to make correct judgements, i.e. to recognize (in the lives of others but primarily in their
own) what is genuine (recognizing what is genuine is a fair characterization of wisdom).
Showing how to achieve the knowledge needed for such recognition is Thoreau's
occupation in Walden. It is hard work because, as Wittgenstein notes in Philosophical
Investigations (PI 11, xi., pg.227),
There is in general no such agreement [like the agreement in judgements of colors]
over the question of whether an expression of feeling is genuine or not.
I am sure, sure, that he is not pretending; but some third person is not. Can I always
convince him? And if not is there some mistake in his reasoning or observations?
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"You're all at sea!"- we say this when someone doubts what we recognize as clearly
genuine - but we cannot prove anything.'
That there is no general agreement in our putative recognitions of genuineness as
there is in our judgements of colors makes the task of instructing others to recognize
genuineness especially hard. Someone instructing others in this sort of recognizing, in this
sort of judging, cannot make use of the canonical vehicles of instruction: proof and
evidence. The instructor must find a way to teach, and the student must find a way to learn,
without proof or evidence, without venturing verification. The reason for this is not that
proof is impossible, but rather that the concept 'proof is inapplicable (Wittgenstein's
'cannot' in "cannot prove anything" is grammatical); in such teaching there is no foothold
for 'proof or 'disproof. This does not mean that there are no terms of criticism for such
an instructor - it just means that 'proven7 and 'disproven7 are not among his critical terms.
Nor does it mean that knowledge plays no role in the instructing: the substratum of such
recognition, such judgement, is "knowledge of humankind":
Is there such a thiig as 'expert judgement' about the genuineness of expressions of
feeling? - Even here, there are those whose judgement is 'better' and whose
judgement is 'worse'.
Correcter prognoses will generally issue from the judgement of those with better
knowledge of humankind.
Can one learn this knowledge? Yes; some can. Not, however, by taking a course in
it, but through 'experience'. - Can someone else be a man's teacher in this?
Certainly. From time to time he gives him the right tip. - This is what 'learning' and
'teaching' are like here. - What one acquires here is not a technique; one learns
correct judgements. There are also rules, but they do not form a system, and only
experienced people can apply them right. Unlike calculating-rules.
What is most difficult here is to put this indefiniteness, correctly and unfalsified,
into words. (PI, 11, xi, pg.227).
Wittgenstein's remarks clarify the difficulty of Thoreau's trade in Walden (and, inter
alia, Wittgenstein's in Philosophical Investigations: a compendium of remarks on the
"natural history of human beings", of certain "extremely common facts of nature"')'; they
also clarify many of Thoreau's comments about his trade. For example, in an (in)farnously
dark passage about the darknesses of Walden (in "Economy") Thoreau reveals:
...I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the
nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities,
the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will
pardon some obscurities,for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's,
and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparablej?om its very nature. I would gladly
tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate.
The words I emphasize here disclose that Thoreau recognized two things about his
trade: First, he recognized that the best he could offer his reader, his student, was going
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to be hints or tips. When Thoreau says he "will only hint" he is not admitting willful
obscurity but conceding necessary obscurity - an obscurity that comparing his trade to
other trades, trades that apply calculating-rules, shows to be necessary. (Wittgenstein, too,
had to concede necessary obscurity (in his Preface to PI):
After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into...a whole, I
realized I should never succeed...And this was, of course, connected with the very
nature of the investigation.)
Second, Thoreau recognized that a trade that turned on hints was going to be one that
traded in secrets, that had trade secrets. The secrets, I think, are secrets only to those
inexperienced in Thoreau's trade; inexperienced, that is, in the byways and bywords of
Walden. Once a person has acquired the needed experience, the secrets will turn out only
to be the natural indefinitenesses of a trade (connected with the very nature of a trade) that
does not admit of a technique, that is not systematic.
Thoreau continues the passage above by reporting
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove, and am still on their trail.
Without speculating overmuch here, now, on what these three creatures represent, if
anything, I want to consider the trailing comment, about still being on their trail. Why
does Thoreau describe his trade in terms of 'trailing'? W i l e Thoreau has lost the hound,
the horse and the turtledove, he has not lost their trail. He is still on their track, still on
track. He still has the scent.
But, trails and tracks look like evidence; and, I have been construing Thoreau's trade
as one that does not allow for evidence. How is this conflict resolved? A bit after his
remark about knowledge of humankind, Wittgenstein points out the following:
It is certainlypossible to be convinced by evidence that someone is in such-and-such
state of mind, that, for instance, he is not pretending. But 'evidence' here includes
'imponderable' evidence. (PI, 11, xi, pg. 228).
So the inapplicability of evidence in teaching someone to recognize genuineness is the
result of the fact that the evidence that plays a part in such teaching includes imponderable
evidence. And evidence that includes imponderables is not what we normally think of as
evidence. (Consider: is recognizing that someone is not pretending, where the recognition
turns on imponderable evidence, ever sensibly said to be justified, to any degree? Can we
make sense of imponderables as necessary or sufficient condition^?^) That the trail
Thoreau is still on must be such that it includes imponderable evidence is shown, if by
nothing else, by the differences in the types of trail each of the creatures would leave. The
trail of a hound and a horse might overlap for a space, but the hound can travel where the
horse cannot. And the trail of the turtledove, unless it were grounded (which it is not,
because, as Thoreau later notes, it has been seen "disappearing behind a cloud"), would
not overlap with that of the hound or horse. Since Thoreau claims to be on "their trail",
i.e. on one trail, he must not be following evidences (of their passing) of a normal sort.
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The evidence must be or include imponderables. The game that Thoreau is trailing cannot
all be afoot.
I am tempted to think that the hound, the horse and the turtledove are all meant by
Thoreau to be imponderables - things whose weight, that is, significance, cannot be
estimated. If this is right, then the signs of their passing would be evidence of imponderables, imponderable evidence.
5. At any rate, Thoreau's trade, the trade that Walden has to teach, is a trade not easily
learned. And it is a trade not to be picked up in a trade school. When the trade is acquired
independently, it is acquired by experiment, by conducting "a thousand simple tests", by
plain living and plain thinking. When it is learned from another, it is learned by living
with the teacher, in close companionship and sympathy. The student of Walden does
nothing so much as spend time with Thoreau, listening while Thoreau drops hints.
(Wittgenstein assembled reminders.) What the student picks up - if lucky'0 - is a
sensibility, a knack, a nose for something - call it almost a methodology; or, an unrnethodical method; or, a method that can only be demonstrated; or, the fragmentsofa system.
(Socrates, in the Phaedo, terms his way of attacking philosophical questions a "haphazard
method"). There is no methodology, exactly, for inventing experiments or tests: There is
no methodology, exactly, for taking hints: No matter how much we strain, no matter how
closely we listen (think ofthe chapter "Sounds" as atutorial in sounds, as a phenomenology
of listening, and mot merely of hearing), we may, and unfortunately typically do, fail to
test all that needs testing or fail to take the hint." Thoreau travels the physical terrain of
Walden, the conceptual terrain of Walden, criss-cross in every direction because he wants
to maximize our chances of testing all that needs testing, of taking the hint: WaEden's
repetitiveness is the repetitiveness of effective teaching.
6 . So what is Thoreau teaching, what knowledge is he proffering? Knowledge of humankind. He stakes his claim to this knowledge, to expert judgement or at least better
judgement, in the opening passages of Walden. Consider the diagnoses. "The mass of men
lead lives of quiet desperation"; or "I would fain say something... [about] you who read
these pages"; or "But men labor under a mistake"; or "Most men...are so occupied with
the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be
plucked by them"; or "It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live,
for my sight has been whetted by experience..."; etc. These diagnoses are necessary if
Thoreau is to stake his claim to be his student's teacher in this knowledge, if he is to alert
his student to the need to be listening for hints or tips. Thoreau7s deliberate style is
necessary for putting the indefiniteness, the obscurity, of his trade into words correctly
and unfalsified; Thoreau's reserved style is necessary because his trade requires him to
keep secrets.'*
Thoreau provides diagnoses and while doing so he is talking to his student as if the
student were a philosopher or desired to be one. So Thoreau thinks of the philosopher as
a person with knowledge of humankind or as a person who desires such knowledge. This
knowledge is then to be employed in recognizing what is genuine, in solving some of the
difficulties of life. Because the rules that are a part of this knowledge require experience
in order to be put to use, in order to be applied rightly, Thoreau shares his experiences
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with his students. When Thoreau refers to his students as "poor", the poverty to which he
refers is a poverty not only of knowledge, but of experience. In his essay "Walking" he
underscores this. "It is remarkable...how little exercised we have been in our minds; how
few experiences we have had."
If I was right before in maintaining that claims to knowledge of humankind cannot
be proven and that evidence for them includes imponderable evidence, then it may seem
as if knowledge of humankind could not be something philosophical, something that
concerns the philosopher. Most philosophers disrelish obscurity, have no appetite for
indefiniteness. Knowledge of humankind looks to be too "unlicked and incondite" (to
borrow Lamb's phrase) to have any claim to the attention of the philosopher or would-be
philosopher. So, if Wittgenstein is right, and even the most general claims of this sort
"yield at best what looks like the fragments of a system" [emphasis mine], then knowledge
of humankind does not look to be philosophical knowledge. Indeed, knowledge of
humankind may not look to be knowledge at all.
7. From one angle, these charges are all right. A philosopher who is interested in
knowledge of humankind, who is swayed by remarks on the natural history of human
beings, who reads Waldenas a work of philosophy, is a philosopher reconstituted. To most
philosophers, whether analytical or metaphysical (i.e. Continental), a philosopher reconstituted is someone without a philosophical constitution - without a philosophical bone in
his body, without a philosophical charter. But to the philosopher reconstituted, the
anlaytical and metaphysical philosopher alike resemble John Field's wife "with the never
absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere" ("Baker's Farm"). The
analytical and metaphysical philosophers both contend that they will mop the floor so well
that it will be possible to see the super-floor beneath it, a crystalline floor, like slippery
ice, frictionless, ideal (PI 107). The philosopher reconstituted points to the dirty floor, the
rough ground, that actually allows for and supports everyday traffic, and recommends that
the analytical and metaphysical philosophers give up on the mop, except perhaps for
occasional tidying-up.
Anyway, the philosopher reconstituted is willing to make do with less, is willing to
live with the obscurities and secrets, the indefiniteness, of knowledge of humankind.
Because this philosopher regards the hankering for systematic knowledge of humankind
as bootless, he confines himself to hints and tips, so that be will not give the impression
that philosophy as he practices it promises more than scattered, occasional certainties.
These certainties, the certainties that knowledge of humankind allows, are not certainties
at all to the analytical or metaphysical philosopher.
Thoreau's reacts to their complaint by reminding the analytical and metaphysical
philosophers that
There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The
Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knowied~e,- Grammaticaparda, tawny grammar, - a kind of mother-wit... ("walking")'
Wittgenstein responds to their complaint by pointing out tlhat it results from thinking that
there is only one kind of certainty (a complaint resulting from a one-sided diet), so that
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the certainty Wittgenstein and Thoreau think present in knowledge of humankind seems
to the analytical or metaphysical philosopher blinkered certainty, certainty, at its highest,
of low degree. Wittgenstein represents their complaint this way:
"But, if you are certain, isnt' it that you are shutting your eyes in the face of doubt?"
- They are shut.
He then continues
-
Am I less certain that this man is in pain than that twice two is four? Does this
shew the former to be mathematical certainty? 'Mathematical certainty' is not a
psychological concept.
-
The kind of certainty is the kind of language game. (PI, 11, xi, pg. 224)
Wittgenstein's point is that there is more than one kind of certainty. Many, if not all, of
the kinds of certainty admit of degrees. However, there is no one kind of certainty that
allows us to rank the other kinds relative to it or each other: there is no one Divided Line
for certainty. So, the certainty we can have that a man is in pain is not, somehow, a lesser
certainty than the certainty we can have that twice two is four. In each case I can be
completely certain; neither complete certainty is more complete than the other. The
language-game of pain is not the language-game of mathematics, and their respective
certainties, while comparable with one another are not comparable to one another.
I can be as certain of someone else's sensation as of any fact. But this does not make
the propositions "He is much depressed", "25x 25 - 625"and "I am sixty years old
into similar instruments. The explanation suggests itself that the certainty is of a
different kind. - This seems to point to a psychological difference. But the difference
is logical. (PI, 11, xi, pg. 224)
But what of the shutting of the eyes? Wittgenstein's seeminglyabrupt, impolite "They
are shut" makes it sound as if the person who claims that he is completely certain that a
man is in pain is ignoring or trying to ignore doubts about the matter (like the person who
tries not to hear a painful confession by singing and sticking his fingers in his ears). Is this
what Wittgenstein is saying?Notice that Wittgenstein does not answer his interrogator by
saying "Yes; I am shutting my eyes to doubt" or "Yes; I see that there is reason to be
dubious, but I am going to ignore it." Instead he says - neither abruptly nor impolitely, but
simply - "They are shut". I understand Wittgenstein to be saying that he is not, exactly,
ignoring doubt, but rather that he is, as it were, asleep to it, that he is not awake - or,
perhaps, alive - to it. (If you enter my room to lecture me and find, upon finishing, that
I've been asleep the whole time, you cannot accuse me of ignoring you or of pretending
you are not there). In other words, the doubt that the analytic or metaphysical philosopher
is distressed by is doubt that we typically do not see, of which we are typically unaware.
If this is correct, then Wittgenstein is not only saying that we do not ignore these doubts,
he is also saying that we do not overlook or miss them either. Rather, just as it would be
wrong to say that we overlook or miss the ticking of the alarm clock while asleep, it is
wrong to say that we overlook or miss doubts about others being in pain.
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One problem, at least one potential problem, with what I am saying is that it makes
the doubts of the analytic or metaphysical philosopher Book alarmingly real: while I may
not overlook or miss the ticking of my alarm clock when I am asleep, it nonetheless real&
is ticking. So, the analytic or metaphysical philosopher can claim that the doubts that
distress him are doubts that are really there, doubts he discovers. But this gives listening
to the ticking the wrong significance. While it is true that any expression of pain can be
doubted, not every expression of pain is a genuine opportunity for doubt. In fact, if we
were to treat every expression of pain as a genuine opportunity for doubt, we would lose
our hold on the concepts of "simulating pain" and "being in pain". If I were to listen to
every tick of my alarm clock, the alarm clock would no longer be able to perform its
function: since I would never sleep, I would never need the alarm.14
As I said, this does not mean that we never doubt that others are in pain. Instead it
means that we are only awake to that doubt when we are called to it - when an alarm goes
off. Such doubt is doubt to which we must arise. If we judge that someone is pretending
to be in pain, then we open our eyes to doubt. But we open our eyes to doubt only because
of our judgement about the pretending: if I do not judge tlhat someone is pretending to be
in pain and if I do not judge that he is in pain, then, again, doubt has no place. I simply do
not know what to think; I am certain of nothing and doubt nothing.
Thoreau treats the analytic or metaphysical philosopher's distress about these doubts
by pointing out (in "Economy") that
...we may safely trust a good deal more than we do...Nature is as well adapted to
our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a
well-nigh incurable form of disease...How vigilant we are! determined not to live
by faith if we can avoid it; all day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our
prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties.
Thoreau is well aware of how difficult it is to cure someone kept awake by these doubts
(someone suffering from, to twist Joyce's phrase, an '"deal insomnia"). His therapy
consists in reminding his student of the central place of trust in our dealing with things,
with one another. (A therapy Wittgenstein will later try in On Certainty: "At the bottom
of human life is trust.") Trust is not a response to doubt. (And, importantly, neither is
faith). When we trust someone or something, we do not close our eyes to our doubts about
him or it. When we doubt, we do not trust. When we trust, we foreclose doubt. This is
why a breach of trust matters so much, is so painful - such a breach blindsides us. If trust
were a response to doubt, then when someone we trust fools us, it ought normally to be
something that we are, in a way, prepared for: we knew that it might happen but chose to
ignore it, to shut our eyes in the face of the possibility. Such a breach would then normally
chagrin us, annoy us, perhaps disappoint us. But this is not our normal response to such
a breach. When we trust someone, we normally are not, in any way, prepared to be fooled:
Not to chivvy language too far beyond its coarser nuances, but there is a difference between
hopingfor the best from someone and trusting him.
8. Thoreau's point in telling his student that Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as
to our strength is that our budget of concepts, and hence our certainties and uncertainties
(which stand in the middle of our nature as well as Nature) are not poorly fitted to our
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lives. (This "not" (and the one to follow) is grammatical, not a confession of sartorial
impotence). The fact that someone may pretend pain, may fool us, does not stretch the
seam of the concepts in question, does not mean that our concepts are foolish, does not
mean that they cannot render us good service. In fact, a central project of Walden, and of
PI, is rejecting talk of concepts "fitting" things. The relationship, so to speak, between
concepts and our lives is too tight for such talk to be comfortable. The relationship is too
tight because concepts make up our lives, are the very stuff of them; this is the way I take
Wittgenstein's comment that "to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life" (PI
19).But all this makes it sound as if our particular conceptswere, somehow, indispensable,
necessary.15All this makes it sound as if "one could use one's mind to vouch for reality";
which would be strange.16 Still, our concepts are not just convenient, handy.
Language is an instrument. Its concepts are instruments. Now perhaps one thinks
that it can make no great difference which concepts we employ. As, after all, it is
possible to do physics in feet and inches as well as in metres and centimetres; the
difference is merely one of convenience. But even this is not true if, for instance,
calculations in some system of measurement demand more time and trouble than it
is possible for us to give them.
Concepts lead us to make investigations;are the expression of our interest, and direct
our interest. (PI 569-70).
The subject of these remarks is the tightness of the relationship between our concepts
and our lives. Wittgenstein's notion is that our concepts are as necessary as our interests;
and of course our interests can change. But it is easy to overestimate our own changeableness and hence the changeableness of our concepts. We could, for instance, change our
system of measurement. But even such a change as that exacts its price in terms of time
and trouble. And the time and trouble that such a change would cost is not something
simply up to us, at least not as long as our interest in measurement remains constant. Our
interest in measurement is not something we chose to have; our interests force themselves
upon us (and hence so do our concepts; cf. PI pg. 204); weJind that we have them; we
recognize them. These findings and recognizings are what knowledge of humankind
equips us for, are what knowledge of humankind comes to. Our interests can change, but
we do not change them; or, better, we do not change them as we change our clothes."
9. To understand Wittgenstein here, and to understand Thoreau (who is interested,
remember, in the "necessaries of life"), we need to keep before us the fact that concepts
are expressions of our interest, not expressions for it, and that the logic of expressions-of
is not the logic of expressions-for: e.g. the logic of expressions-of-pain is not the logic of
expressions-for-pain. If y is an expression of x, then I can observe x in y: e.g. I can see
pain in someone's face or hear it in his words. (Note that I am assuming that we are certain
of the truth of the antecedent; we are not always certain of it, as per above). There is no
room for me to interpose something, like language, between x and y (PI 245). X is, as it
were, wherever y is.'' The analytical or metaphysical philosopher's retort to this is that
talk of, e.g. hearing pain in someone's words or seeing pain in someone's face is not literal
talk - pain cannot be heard or seen, not literally. The pressure to talk about literal talk here
is exerted, I think, by the analytical or metaphysical philosopher's assurance that the word
'in' is used in such statements in a way that is parasitic on the spatial use of the word.19
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(So much of philosophy turns on, over, against, around preposition^.^^) But this assurance
is the assurance of someone hard up for categories. (Just as the argument over whether
there is one world or two, the argument between the monist and the dualist, results from
the same assurance: assurance that there are only a few worlds - surely two at most, or
maybe one, instead of, say, nineteen.21)If someone were to stare at a statement, or to repeat
an utterance again and again and explain his doing so by saying that he was looking for
the pain in the statement or listening for the pain in the utterance would we correct him
by saying that he took something literally that was meant figuratively? Or, would we
simply say that he misunderstood? The claim that pain cannot be seen or heard is the result
of a prejudice, an ancient prejudice at that, about what seeing and hearing come to, about
the proper objects of the various senses. It is true I guess that 'pain' is not normally
accepted as a candidate for completing the statement "I see -." or "I hear -.", but this
does not entail that 'see' in statements like "I see that he is in pain" or "I see the pain in
his face" is misused or mismodelled or mistaken. We can see more than colors and can
hear more than sounds.22Only someone plumping for a particular theory of sight, and not
someone who has appreciated the concept of 'sight', miglht think otherwise (Zettel223).
As Hanson and Ziff realized, there is more to seeing than meets the eye (and more to
hearing than meets the ear). Thoreau calls this into view by underscoring that "his sight
[had] been whetted by experience." Seeing and hearing are not always only states; they
are also offen achievements. We can and are taught to see and to hear. ("This is why I
speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear.")
The eyes of critics of painting or the ears of critics of music are different in degree, and
not in kind, from the eyes and ears of the rest of us. Statements like "I see the pain in his
face" or "I hear the pain in his words" are in order as they stand; we do not need to explain
them, or explain them away, by falling back on the literavfigurative distinction. Seeing
and hearing are more complicated businesses than this distinction allows.
-
An expression of something - say, pain - differs from1 an expression for it in that (in
painhl circumstances) occurrences of the former are natural and non-occurrencesunnatural whereas occurrences and non-occurrences of the latter ,we neither. Yelling or grunting
or whining or exclaiming "That hurts!" is a natural expression of pain. Waving a red flat
is not natural (nor is it unnatural); although it could be agreed upon as an expression for
pain. Expressions-for are conventional in a way that expressions-of are not. If I accidentally drop a huge rock on your foot and hear bones break and see blood, your scream would
be a natural expression of your pain. If you do nothing, not even grimace or whimper, I
will think that something is wrong, that your reaction is unnatural. However, if we agree
that waving a red flag is to be an expression for pain, and I then drop the rock accidentally
and you wave the flag, I will not think your waving natural; I will think that you have
remembered our agreement. If you do not wave the flag, I will not think your failure to
wave it unnatural; I will think that you have forgotten our agreement. But expressions of
pain are not things that can sensibly be remembered or forgotten. (Can babies forget to
cry?) If I accidentally drop the rock and you do nothing and then, responding to my
expression of worry, you claim that you forgot to grimace or whimper (or something), I
will not know what to make of your claim. You may, of course, explain to me that you
are a stoic sort of fellow and I may accept this as an explanation of what looked to me
unnatural; but this is nothing like forgetting to grimace or whimper (or something); it
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would in fact tell me that you felt the need to grimace or whimper (or something) but that
you succeeded in resisting it.
This is why expressions-of are not such as to fit or not fit what they are expressions-of.
Fittingness or the lack of it is something that makes sense where the expressions that
concern us are expressions-for. Expressions-for are tailored, as it were, to the things they
are expressions-for. There is room between x and y, where y is an expression for x, room
for us to move between x and y, to consider their fit. Where y is an expression for x, it
makes sense to talk, e.g. of inferring x &om y. But this does not make sense where y is an
expression of x: Your cry "That hurts!" reveals your pain to me. I observe it (I can hear
your pain in it). Waving a red flag lets me conclude that you are in pain.23
10. If our concepts are expressions of our interests, our concepts neither fit nor fail to fit
those interests, neither fit nor fail to fit our lives. Instead our concepts reveal our interests,
our lives, show them to us. And our concepts enable us to direct our lives, to lead them
and not merely live them. Living, like seeing and hearing, is not always only a state; it is
also sometimes an achievement. Our lives are gravid with our concepts and our concepts
gravid with our lives: lives without concepts are blind, directionless; concepts without
Our concept of measurement reveals our interest in it, shows us
lives empty, sen~eless.'~
that, as things stand, a human life is in part a life of measurement. The human predicament
is a measurable predicament and leading a human life is often a matter of making
measurements, of taking the measure of thingse2*
11. This turn-of-philosophical-phrase brings me full circle. Thoreau understands a philosopher to be someone who, because of his knowledge of humankind, can recognize what
is genuine and, in turn, solve some of the difficulties of life, both theoretically and
practically. Recognizing what is genuine is no science. (Nor is it the result of science.
Recognizing what is genuine is what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions
(PI 126).) However, such recognizing is no nescience, either. It is part of knowing what
to make of things. What Thoreau does in Walden is to set himself up as someone who is
genuine and who can instruct others to recognize genuineness. There is throughout Walden
a subtle, dialectical interplay between Thoreau's genuineness and his instructing: if
Thoreau manages to get his student to recognize genuineness and the student recognizes
that Thoreau is not genuine, then Thoreau's instructing becomes suspect, as well as the
putative recognitions of genuineness to which his instructing led. If the student recognizes
that Thoreau is genuine, then progress continues. Initially trusting Thoreau (and then
continuing to find him trustworthy) is thus crucial to learning the lessons he has to teach.
Think of this as Thoreau's way of meeting the Learner's Paradox.
Reason Papers
Walden is the expression of Thoreau.
Endnotes
1. I thank David L. Norton, Iakovos Vasiliou, Rupert Read and Clif Perry for helpful
comments on this essay. I also record my debt, first to the writings of Stanley Cave11 and
Virgil Aldrich, and then to those of John McDowell and Cora Diamond.
2. Ziff, P. Philosophic Turnings (Ithaca: Comell University Press, 1966), pg. vii.
3. I have transposed into these remarks some remarks of Virgil Aldrich's. Cf. Aldrich, V.
Philosophy ofArt (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), pp. ix and 5.
4. Because it is so tempting to think that we could steal a philosophical glance behind our
conceptual situation - a glance that would permit an account of it, or a justification - I note
an argument of David Bell's (Frege 's Theory of JuaPgeement (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1979), pp. 138-9):
Any acceptable philosophical account of human judgement must have a terminus.
But for obvious reasons that terminus cannot be, or presuppose, those very discursive abilities which were to be elucidated. And so our ability to think, to judge, to
manipulate concepts depends upon our performing acts which are essentially
non-conceptual, and which are, therefore, inaccessible to philosophical analysis...There can no more be a philosophical account of buman judgement] than there
can be a philosophical account of the human digestive process: both are non-conceptual, non-discursive processes. At this point one's philosophical spade is turned.
Kant, having argued that the categories are the fundamental rules governing the
creation of propositional unity, observes that 'this peculiarity of our understanding,
that it can produce a priori unity of apperception by means of the categories, and
only by such and so many, is as little capable of further explanation as why we have
just these and no other functions ofjudgement' (B 146). All we can say here is: this
is what we do.
Bell argues that Kant, Frege and Wittgenstein all participate in a philosophical
tradition that centers on the notion of judgement (cf. pp. 1- 12 and passim). A secondary
task of this paper is to scrape together more reasons for thinking of Thoreau as participating
in that philosophical tradition. I say "more", because a theme of Cavell's masterpiece, The
Senses of Walden, is that Thoreau does participate in the tradition. (On this tradition, see
also James Conant's invaluable "The Search for Logically Alien Thought", Philosophical
Topics, Fall, 1991, pp. 115-180). Frege, Wittgenstein and Thoreau are all "gifted composers of variations on Kantian themes" (Sellars).
5. This is another way in which Thoreau belongs to the Kmtian tradition (cf. note 4): As
Conceptual Appreciation, Thoreau's philosophy continues Kant's Critical Philosophy and I don't think this twists "Critical" in a way disloyal to Kant's use of it.
6. Thoreau, H. Walden (New York: Modem Library, 1950). All quotations from Walden
will be taken from this edition. I will identify passages (in the text) by noting the title of
the chapter in which they occur.
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Reason P a p e r s
7.Anscornbe, G., trans. Philosophical Investigations (New York: The MacMillan CO.,
1953), Third Edition. All quotations will make use of Anscombe's translations, unless
otherwise noted.
8. I have changed Anscombe's translation of Wittgenstein's comment on PI 142 (pg. 56).
Anscombe's translation runs: "What we have to mention in order to explain the significance, I mean the importance, of a concept, are often extremely general facts of nature:
such facts as are hardly ever mentioned because of their great generality." Strictly
speaking, there is nothing at all wrong with translating 'allgemeinheit' as 'general', but
so translating is I think unhappy because of Wittgenstein's famous use of 'generality' in
the Blue Book There Wittgenstein upbraids philosophers for their "craving for generality".
Anscombe's translation makes it sound as if Wittgenstein is now trying to satisfy the same
craving. A better translation, one that avoids this problem and so clarifies the thought of
the passage, is 'common': "What we have to mention in order to explain the significance,
I mean the importance, of a concept, are often extremely common facts of nature: such
facts as are hardly ever mentioned because of their great commonness." The same change
would also clarify Wittgenstein's remarks at 11, xii.
9. Since this may make recognitions of genuineness seem hopelessly dark, let me add a
few relevant words, first from David Bell (Frege 's Theov of Judgement, pp. 138-9), then
fiom Kant, and then from Kendall Walton ("The Dispensibility of Perceptual Inferences",
Mind July, 1963, pg. 362). Bell:
One's behavior can conform to a given rule - and this behavior can be learned without its being the case that certain conditions are judged satisfied, or that certain
behavior is called for on the part of the person acquiring the ability. Kant expressed
this succinctly: 'judgement is a peculiar talent which can be practiced only and
cannot be taught...Examples are thus the go-cart ofjudgement' (B17lff).
Kant continues the lines Bell quotes by saying:
[Judgement] is the specific quality of so-called mother- wit; and its lack no school
can make good. For although an abundance of rules borrowed fiom the insight of
others may indeed be proferred to, and as it were grafted upon, a limited understanding, the power of rightly employing them must belong to the learner himself;
and in the absence of such a natural gift no rule that may be prescribed to him for
this purpose can insure against misuse. [Footnote: Deficiency in judgement is just
what is ordinarily called stupidity, and for such a failing there is no remedy.]
(B 172-3).
What is said about judgement here is true, I think afortiori, of recognition. Walton:
We rarely make mistakes in recognizing our friends, but we could not begin to
describe many of their facial characteristics, certainly not enough to enable another
person to identify them with assurance. Is our inability due to language difficulties?
Do you know what a friend's facial features are, but just do not know what words
to use in describing them? If so, you could at least describe his features to yourself,
i.e. you could make up completely arbitrary symbols to stand for them. But try to
describe to yourself, say, an identical twin of one of your friends. Can you say much
Reason Papers
49
more than 'He looks like my fi-iend', and is not this entirely sufficient?DOyou keep
a card file in your head of all your acquaintances7facia1and bodily characteristics,
and thumb through it every time you see someone to find who it is?
10. Think here of the need for what Kant above (note 9) calls "a natural gift."
11. Some comments from G.A. Paul's essay, "Wittgenstein" (in Ryle, G. ed. The
Revolution in Philosophy (London: MacMillan and Co. Ltd., 1957)' pg. 96), are in order
here:
Here is why Wittgenstein presents no method in philosophy; there is no method for
inventing cases, no method for arranging them.
And there is no method for "beingstruck by" one fact rather than another...The fly
in the fly-bottle may countless times eye the way out - and not be particularly struck
by it.
12. Since my talk of necessary obscurity may seem unnecessarily obscure, let me say a
word or two more about it. Another way of thinking about the necessary obscurity in
Thoreau's trade is this: the obscurity embodies a knowledge of the unsayable. Stanley
Cavell, from whom I have borrowed the phrase "knowledge of the unsayable," introduces
it by noting that
The knowledge of the unsayable is the study of what Wittgenstein means by
physiognomy. His continuous sketches of it occur in Part I1 of the Philosophical
Investigations [in section xi] ...(The World Viewed (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1979), pg. 157).
So we can say of Thoreau's obscurity that it embodies a knowledge of physiognomy. But
what does that mean? "Knowledge of physiognomy'~ooksto be a more drumly phrase
than any I have used so far.
Wittgenstein uses the term "physiognomy" four times in PI: PI568; 11, vi, pg. 181;
11,xi, pp. 2 10 and 218. The last three times he uses it, he uses it when talking about words.
Wittgenstein7sidea is that words have a familiar physiognomy, a face - that words "look
at us" (pg. 181). At 568, after talking about the distinction between what is essential and
inessential (in a game), Wittgenstein notes, parenthetically, that "Meaning is a physiognomy". I take this to mean that meanings, like words, have familiar physiognomies, faces.
And I take this to mean that we can recognize a meaning, just as we can recognize a face.
When I recognize the meaning, say, in a passage of music, .I
have seen its face, recognized
it. This hooks up, in ways that I hope are obvious, with my construal of Thoreau as teaching
his reader to recognize genuineness. Walden sketches the face, the physiognomy, of
genuineness - first from one angle, and then from another. (For more on the notion of
faces, of physiognomies, cf. Diamond, C. "The Face ofNecessity", in The Realistic Spirit
(Cambridge, Massuchesetts: MIT Press, 1991)' pp. 243-66.) Why does such teaching by
such sketches involve knowledge of the unsayable? Well, part of the answer is that such
teaching involves imponderable evidence; but another part of the answer is that we cannot
detach the expression of genuineness from that which expresses it. The content of
genuineness, we might say, is in the face that expresses it. This means that Thoreau cannot
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provide, nor can we provide ourselves with an abstract, or a composite, sketch of
genuineness - a sketch that we could carry around to help us out. (We could, of course,
carry Walden around?) In other words, the expression of genuineness cannot be digested
into a brief description. No matter how much someone says about the expression of
genuineness, there is always something more to be said, something to be taken back,
something to be qualified: about the expression of genuineness, there is something
unsayable.
13. Since the coincidence of terms is of more than passing interest, compare this quotation
with the quotation from Kant above (note 9).
14. Another, related, worry about my handling of the shutting of the eyes is this: Haven't
I made the shutting of the eyes altogether too passive? Isn't Wittgenstein's point that he,
for whatever reason, decided to shut his eyes - actively? I think the answer to both these
questions is "No". Wittgenstein ends the remark that comes before the shutting of the eyes
remark by saying that the differences among kinds of certainty are logical, not psychological differences. He glosses this in the remark following the shutting of the eyes remark
by saying "The kind of certainty is the kind of language-game". I take these remarks to
point out that my eyes are shut to doubts because I play certain language-games; my eyes
are not shut because I have actively decided to shut them. And of course I typically did
not actively decide to play the language-games I play.
15. And, in a way, they are. After all, it makes sense to say that humans have five senses.
It is not clear what sense it makes to say that humans have only five senses. But this does
not make philosophy Profound Science.
16. O'Shaughnessy, B. "The Origin of Pain", Analysis, June 1955, pg. 126.
17. Cf. PI 11, xii: "Compare a concept with a style of painting. For is even our style of
painting arbitrary? Can we choose one at pleasure?...Is it a mere question of pleasing and
ugly?"
18. There is serious danger here in treating x and y as separate things, a danger that has
as its parent danger the danger of treating x as a thing at all. As Wittgenstein notes, x,
where y is an expression ofx, "is not asomethingand not a nothing either" and this amounts
to a rejection of the grammer of 'things9 where x is concerned (PI 304).
For more, cf. Cook, J. "Human Beings" in Winch, P, ed. Studies in the Philosophy of
Wittgenstein (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 117-151, especially
pp. 145R, and, McDowell, J. "One Strand in the Private Language Argument" in McGuinness, B. and Haller, R. eds. Wittgenstein in Focus (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989), pp.285304.
19. The little word 'in' can turn out a lot of philosophy, as Aldrich points up:
[Wittgenstein] is trying to dojustice to the preposition 'in'. His whole philosophical
psychology gravitates around this concern. The meagre, usually monolithic, treat-
Reason Papers
51
ment of 'in' ...has impoverished and caricatured philosophy into lopsided monism,
impossible dualism, etc. ("Kripke on Wittgenstein on Regulation", pp.380).
20. "Philosophy has always turned on grammatical particles." William James ("A World
of Pure Experience", Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York: Longmans, Green and
Co., 1943), pg.45).
21. Cf. Austin, J.L. "Intelligent Behaviour: A Critical R.eview of The Concept of Mind'
in Wood and Pitcher, eds. Ryle: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, New York:
Anchor Books, 1970), pg. 48. Austin ends the section I am echoing by asking "Why, if
there are nineteen of anything, is it not philosophy?"
22. As Kendall Walton observes,
...[Tlhere seems to be no reason to suppose that there are any limits at all to the kind
of empirical facts that can be known directly. Contrary to traditional philosophical
doctrine...our knowledge of other people's minds is not usually inferred fiom their
behavior and facial expressions...Which information we receive directly from sense
experience and which must be inferred...does not depend on an intrinsic difference
between two kinds of empirical facts, but on the practitcal conditions of ordinary
life which determine our perceptual dispositions. ("The Dispensabilityof Perceptual
Inferences", pp.363 and 368).
Walton's argument is strikingly like that ofAustin7sinsense andSensibiIia (Austin makes
his point in connection with language, not facts):
...[T]he question of truth and falsehood does not turn only on what a sentence is,
nor yet on what it means, but on, speaking very broadly, the circumstances in which
it is uttered ...[Flor much the same reasons there could be no question of picking out
from [a] bunch of sentences those that are evidence for others... What k i d of
sentence is uttered as providing evidence for what depends, again, on the circumstances of a particular case; there is no kind of sentence which as such is evidenceproviding... (Austin, J.L. Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1962), pg.111.
Aldrich is fond of reminding himself and his reader of a line from Aristotle:
...[I]t is important to notice that, for such matters, the decision rests with perception,
to use Aristotle's phrase, though it is just as important to remember that perception
is decisive in context. ("Behavior, Simulating and Nonsimulating", Journal of
Philosophy, Sept. 1966), pg.457).
Note, too, the opening lines of Wittgenstein's remark quoted on pg. 14: I can be as certain
of someone else's sensation as of any fact.
23. Of course, after repeated uses, some expressions-for can become an expressions-of,
although there is no algorithm available for capturingjust what "after repeated uses" comes
to. In some cases, after repeated uses, I no longer conclude (that, say, you are in pain), but
see.
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an inability to enter into an activity in which words play a part
renders the activity and those words (as used in the activity) pointless or unintelligible to
the person with the inability. Activities in which words play a part cannot be explained to
someone unable to enter them.
24. This is the reason why
I owe the form of the remark in the text partially, of course, to Kant, and partially to
Virgil Aldrich ("Kripke on Wittgenstein on Regulation", pg.377). Aldrich notes:
Maps and rules presuppose practices as their substrata but, on the other hand, there
is no practice that is not gravid with rules or maps. Neither has ultimate priority.
Cora Diamond has said similar things: cf. "Rules: Looking in the Right Place" (in Phillips
and Winch, eds. Wittgenstein: Attention to Particulars (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1989),pp. 12-34). For more general thoughts in this connection, cf. JohnMcDowell's M i d
and Wbrld (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994), especially
Lecture 11, pp.7-9. What McDowell calls "The Unboundedness of the Conceptual", his
contention that the reach of the space of reasons does not exceed the grasp of the space of
concepts, forms a useful backdrop to what I have said.
25. At this point, someone might object: "Ok - I've let you get away with a bunch of
sentences like this one until now. But now, I've had enough. This sentence is a tissue of
equivocations." My response to this lines up with Wittgenstein's response to a similar
objection.
Then has "understanding" two different meanings here? - I would rather say that
these kinds of use of "understanding"make up its meaning, make up my concept of
understanding.
For I want to apply the word "understanding"to all this. (PI 532).
Just so: I would rather say that these kinds of use of "measurement" make up its meaning,
make up my concept of measurement.
This sentence, and its similar predecessors, are sentences that compact (at least part
of) the complicated grammar of a word. Their point is to reveal the variety of inflections
of a word. (Think of the variety of inflections of a word as, to borrow a Tractatarian term,
its internal properties).